The drilling of an oil, gas, or other type of well requires that an upper casing string be set at some shallower depth than the total depth of the well. Some purposes of the casing string are to protect a portion of the wellbore environment and to protect personnel. When the casing string is set, the drilling operation continues to extend the open hole portion of the wellbore below the casing string. During the drilling process, it can be necessary to pull the drill string out of the wellbore (a process known as “tripping”) on one or more occasions. The open hole and casing provides a hydraulic conduit up through the wellbore that serves as a flow path with the potential risk of flow. In other words, unless a tripping operation is carefully controlled, the integrity of the open hole can be compromised.
A drill string can be several thousand feet long, and so performing a tripping operation can take many hours. This time to perform a tripping operation, as well as a subsequent reinsertion of the drill string into the wellbore, can cost significant amounts of money without making any progress in terms of extending the open hole portion of the wellbore. Consequently, there is a lack of incentive to slow the tripping process from a financial perspective.